RICCARDO TISCI’S FIRST BURBERRY COLLECTION – SS 2019
outdated clichés. But Tisci has a clearer grasp than most misty-eyed Anglophiles. He first came to the UK at 17, worked as a merchandiser for high street chain, Monsoon, and studied at Central Saint Martins. “I was so shy and scared of life when I first got to London,” he says. “I didn’t know I was going to be a designer. I didn’t know I’d be accepted at Saint Martins. In so many ways England helped me break out, and gave me some punch. That’s why I’m obsessed with its style.”
It has certainly been quite a trek for Tisci to his current elevated perch at Burberry – and the five-star Claridge’s hotel suite he occupied for several months until he found a more permanent home. His father died when he was four. For years, home life for Tisci and his eight sisters was, to put it mildly, challenging. He was working part-time with his uncle as a plasterer when he was 11. His mother, Elmerinda, didn’t learn to read until she was in her twenties. “But she is super bright,” Tisci says.
He is, too – bright enough to know that British millennials are more likely to be engaged by rap than by rock; and probably bright enough to handle the tricky task of stretching Burberry at both ends – pumping out relatively affordable cult T-shirts and trainers for millennials, and simultaneously making its top-priced lines more luxurious than hitherto.
His expertise with leather will, for now, be diverted from bondage-lite to making Burberry’s under-performing bag line sleeker and more aspirational – and broadening the cultural reach of the trench. “The funny thing is, I was never really into the trench. But once I studied its history I realised what a beautiful thing it is,” he says.
Far from reducing Burberry to an upscale Nike, he says he wants to make it a bastion of tailoring – “which it hasn’t really been so far. Yet Savile Row is the basis of all British fashion”. He wants to bring back elegance too.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he states. “I love streetwear – I’m a boy of the streets. I was one of the first to bring it to a luxury house, but I think it’s gone too far.”
It will take a few seasons to judge whether he succeeds in his ambitions. But for me, the mark of the man’s character lies outside the show: the presence of his mother and sisters in the front row (Elmerinda was so proud she had to produce a hankie during the finale); the fact that he wished Christopher Bailey a happy birthday on his Instagram (there are other designers who prefer to erase all traces of their predecessors); and his closeness to Marco Gobbetti – Burberry’s highly regarded CEO.
Gobbetti famously oversaw the transformation of Céline under Phoebe Philo, and previously worked with Tisci at Givenchy. Gobbetti is expected to do great things for Burberry. Stand by, there are two Italians in charge.